by Rhonda Abbott Blevins, Certified Enneagram Trainer
The staff member who got under my skin.
I’ll start with a confession. A few years ago, I had a staff member who drove me a little crazy.
She seemed to spend half her day in other people’s offices. She had a hard time getting her work done without a lot of input from everyone else. She needed reassurance from me, and a lot of it, more than I felt I had to give. And whenever I brought a new idea to the table, she’d poke holes in it. Honestly, it felt like she was undermining me.
I’m an Enneagram Seven. We Sevens love new ideas, possibilities, momentum. We do not love being slowed down. You can probably guess how those staff meetings felt from my side of the table.
Then I learned she was an Enneagram Six.
Sixes are often described as the most anxious of the nine types, and one way they ease that anxiety is by building a strong “tribe” around them. People to check in with. People to lean on. When I learned that, it all clicked. The time in other people’s offices made sense. The need for reassurance made sense. Even the hole-poking made sense. That wasn’t undermining. That was a Six doing what Sixes do well: thinking through the worst-case scenario so the rest of us don’t get blindsided.
My irritation didn’t vanish overnight, but it slowly turned into empathy. I stopped taking her pushback so personally, and I started inviting it. I’d bring her a plan and ask, “What holes do you see in this?” I also made a point of offering the occasional atta-girl.
What happened? She became less anxious and more productive. And I came to value her input in a way I hadn’t before.
So can the Enneagram really help your team work better together? I believe it can. I’ve seen it on my own staff, and I’ve seen it on church staffs I’ve worked with through Pinnacle. But there are a few things I want you to know first.
Where I start with a church staff.
I always begin by helping each person discover their own type. (More on why that matters in a minute.) Then we get to the fun part. I walk the team through situations that come up on a church staff and how each type tends to handle them. There’s usually a lot of laughter, and more than a few moments of recognition.
One module I use with nearly every church staff is about communication. It rests on two ideas:
Sender distortions are the ways each type communicates that can keep others from receiving the message the way it was meant.
Receiver distortions are the filters each type listens through, which shape what they actually hear.
I’m my own best example. We Sevens tend to talk fast and jump from idea to idea. We’re animated. We talk with our hands. And we like to keep our options open, which gets tricky when leadership so often means choosing between them.
So I’ve had to make some changes. In the pulpit, I’ve learned to slow down my cadence. On the chancel, I’m more intentional about how I move, so a point can actually land. In meetings with staff and lay leaders, I build in pauses between topics instead of shifting gears the second I’m ready to move on.
On the receiving end, Sevens tend to judge a conversation by whether it’s fun or interesting. If it’s neither, we’re ready to move along. But ministry is full of conversations that are difficult, routine, mundane, and, let’s be honest, boring. I’ve had to learn to value those, too.
Knowing this about myself has helped me respond instead of react in more ways than I can count, especially at church. When a whole team understands these patterns in one another, communication gets clearer, and people start to genuinely understand the personalities they serve alongside.
Practicing the hardest kind of feedback.
Another module I teach is on feedback. Feedback can flow from the top down, from the bottom up, or between peers. In a church, bottom-up is often the hardest. Who wants to tell the pastor they’re the problem?
So I give teams this scenario. The pastor is always out saving the world: engaged in the community, fighting for justice, quick to make a hospital visit. But the pastor is also notoriously late getting the bulletin information to the staff. It’s causing real trouble for the office staff and the music staff. Someone has to say something.
I ask the group to assign an Enneagram type to the pastor and to the office staff member who has to have that conversation. Then I take volunteers to role-play the exchange, each person communicating the way their assigned type typically would. (Notice they’re typing fictional characters, not each other.)
It’s always a lot of fun, with plenty of laughs. But underneath the laughter, people are practicing something hard. They see how the same message lands differently depending on who delivers it and who receives it. And they get to rehearse a conversation that’s easy to keep putting off in real life.
Why church teams are a little different.
Church staffs aren’t quite like other workplaces. They tend to be more familial and more casual than most business settings. The hierarchy is often loose, and the lines get blurry. The chair of your church board, for instance, might be both your boss and your parishioner.
That’s a big part of why I value the Enneagram in church settings. It offers a deeper understanding of ourselves and of each other, and that helps us navigate every kind of relationship, including the complicated ones.
The “yes, but…”
Here’s the caveat I teach every single time: knowing someone’s Enneagram type should never become a cudgel. It is not a tool for denigrating or dismissing anyone.
Let people discover their own type. The only time I’ve seen the Enneagram go badly on a team, a woman was told by her coworkers, “You’re a Four.” She hadn’t been part of the training. She’d never had the chance to discover her type for herself. And the way they described Fours felt pejorative to her. It soured her on the whole framework, and I can’t say I blame her.
Be careful with hiring and HR decisions. Leaders should tread carefully before using the Enneagram in hiring or other personnel decisions. It’s meant to deepen understanding, not to sort people.
For the skeptics.
Some pastors are wary of the Enneagram, and I understand that. I’ll admit right up front that its origins are opaque. Many believe it originated from the deadly sins; the Enneagram’s “passions” line up closely with them. There weren’t always seven, either. The fourth-century desert monk Evagrius Ponticus named eight, and Gregory the Great later reshaped the list into the seven we know.
Mostly, though, I answer skeptics with my own testimony. I’ve studied the Enneagram for more than 25 years, and it has been tremendously useful for understanding myself and others. My Six staff member is a good example. Learning her type gave me more compassion for her. It’s given me more compassion for myself, too, as I’ve learned to see my strengths as a Seven right alongside my growth edges.
Making it stick.
The Enneagram works best when it isn’t a one-and-done workshop. Teams change. People leave, new people arrive, and the shared language fades if no one keeps using it. Ongoing work keeps it alive, especially on teams with turnover.
For a team that’s new to the Enneagram, I usually recommend a full-day training of about six hours. After that, half-day follow-up workshops keep the conversation going and give new team members the chance to discover their types.
Try this next week.
You don’t need to bring anyone in to get started. Invite your team to take the Enneagram Quick Test on the Pinnacle website. Encourage everyone to hold their results loosely. A quick test is a starting point, not a verdict, and each person gets to decide which type truly fits. If folks are willing, share what you discovered at your next staff meeting.
And if you’d like help taking your team further, I’d love to hear from you. You can learn more about team trainings through Pinnacle Leadership Associates at pinnlead.com/ascend-enneagram or feel free to reach out to me directly at rabbottblevins@gmail.com.
Rhonda Blevins is senior pastor of Chapel by the Sea on Clearwater Beach, Florida, and an Enneagram coach with Pinnacle Leadership Associates.
